The report concludes: “The world is changing and the Royal Navy and Royal Marines need to change with it.

“However, if the price of such change is the sacrifice of this country’s amphibious capability, we can only conclude this to be a short-sighted, militarily illiterate manoeuvre totally at odds with strategic reality.”

The committee dismissed MOD suggestions that the nation’s new aircraft carriers could take the role of the amphibious ships.

HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales “are in reality no substitute for the purpose-built amphibious warships in this role,” the report concluded.

Julian Lewis, defence committee chairman, said the proposal to axe HMS Albion and HMS Bulwark 15 years before they were due to leave service “demonstrates, yet again, the desperate inadequacy of the defence budget”.

He said: “We must reinstate a target of around 3 per cent of GDP – the percentage which we spent right up to the mid-1990s, long after the ‘peace dividend’ cuts, at the end of the Cold War, had been made.

He said that unless Mr Williamson got more money “the Royal Marines will be reduced to a level far below the critical mass needed to sustain them as a high-readiness Commando force”.

The committee said global trends such as the spread of cities along the world’s coastlines meant there was an ongoing need for amphibious operations.

Yet, while every major defence power was seeking to increase their amphibious forces, Britain “may be forced prematurely to abandon them”.

Johnny Mercer MP, a former officer in 29 Commando, said: “This report puts into sharp focus the folly of removing from this nation’s military capabilities the amphibious fleet, and reducing the Royal Marines.

“In an area where every single other credible tier one military nation is expanding their Amphibious Forces, we cannot afford to be heading in the other direction, shrinking to the ‘little Britain’ so many of our foes would like to see.”http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/10/25/britain-unable-conduct-major-amphibious-operations-proposed/